


Faerie Gifts: Promise Broken

by Liv Campbell (perdikitti), William Alexander (zannyvix)



Series: Faerie Gifts [7]
Category: Alpha and Omega - Patricia Briggs, Mercy Thompson Series - Patricia Briggs
Genre: Ambushes and Sneak Attacks, Bluegrass Pack, Cantrip, Complicated Relationships, Fae & Faeries, Fae Drama, Fair Game Spoilers, Feelings, Fighting, Gay, Gay Male Character, Gen, Injury Recovery, Interspecies Relationship(s), Kidnapping, M/M, Minor Character Death, Pack Drama, Recovery, Relationship(s), Shooting, Spoilers, Trust, Werewolf, Werewolves, Witches, character angst, fae, gay relationship, injuries, relationship drama, renovation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-01-16 16:39:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 21,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18525469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perdikitti/pseuds/Liv%20Campbell, https://archiveofourown.org/users/zannyvix/pseuds/William%20Alexander
Summary: Sam’s lover is gone. His pack is in turmoil. His best friend is in exile. His only job site needs an exorcist and a bulldozer. All he wants is to keep his head down and have a quiet, peaceful Thanksgiving with his pack.But when a brazen attack leaves a pack member hurt and a child in harm’s way, Sam and his pack have to put everything else aside. It’s not just survival. This time, it’s personal.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> _Contains spoilers for the ending of Patricia Briggs'_ Fair Game _. Please do not proceed unless you're okay with spoilers!_
> 
>  
> 
> “The course of true love never did run smooth.” – William Shakespeare, _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_

_Marlow_

 

The car slid away from the curb, joining the orderly line of vehicles leaving the confines of the airport. Marlow adjusted his sunglasses and glared at the back of his driver’s head. The last time he’d let a human drive him around when he was on pack business, he’d been shot right in the gut. Never again. He had been in cars, planes, or airports for the better part of the last twenty four hours and the tight leash he kept on his temper was starting to fray. There were too many people, too many humans around him and his charge.

It wouldn’t do to get this close to home only to have his beast play peek-a-boo in a carload of feds. Someone would lose it and shoot him again. Getting shot always sucked, but he could deal. Marlow was more concerned with the rest of the package. If another marshal shot him for going fanged and furry, he’d get stuck with paperwork for days. Marlow would do just about anything to avoid that particular pain in his ass.

Besides, they might promote him if they found out what he was. Marlow was a good wolf. He kept his head down and his nose clean. He’d fought his way up the pack ranks until he could finish fights more often than he started them, and worked for the marshals service on the side. It was just about perfect. He was high enough up the ladder to do as he pleased, and low enough to avoid being used by a bigger, badder monster.

Or so he’d thought, until that smug, bland little bastard in Montana sent him on this damn fool’s errand. Politics were a fate worse than death.

“Back to the office?”

Marlow glared at the man behind the wheel. If the head honchos would just let him handle things on his own, he wouldn’t have to answer stupid questions. He could bodyguard and drive at the same time. Marlow huffed. “No. We’re taking Agent Mayfield home.” Werewolves weren’t meant for air travel any more than they were meant for weeks spent pacing the corridors of a federal courthouse. Pat-downs, metal detectors, lawyers. It was hell. Playing nice while he ceded control so some other idiot could drive was just the cherry on his personal shit sundae. He would maul the person who’d booked him to fly overnight out of Boston if they went to the marshals’ office instead.

His charge drummed her fingers on the leather door panel. Lindsey was no wolf, but she was every bit as impatient as him. Tall and lean, with natural sun streaks running through her braided blonde hair, she looked like she belonged on horseback in some Viking fantasy instead of in the back of an inconspicuous sedan. There was a wildness about her that appealed to his wolf. Her dark blue suit fit her very nicely, quality without being too spendy for a fed. The suit made her look tame, but that was just for show. Lindsey Mayfield was a born hunter. So her prey ran wild through government databases, not moonlit fields. That didn’t make her any less deadly when she caught them. “They had CNN playing at our gate. No news yet. If there’s any justice in this universe of ours, we should have a verdict by the weekend.”

“Reckon so.” Marlow glanced at her. The scent of her agitation had been building all day. Even with his tricks, he’d struggled to get a solid read on her. Knowing a person was upset was different from knowing why. “You think he’ll get off?”

Lindsey took a deep breath that strained her suit jacket in all kinds of enticing, distracting ways. Staying in close quarters with her made it hard to remember what he was after. “I don’t know. Can I have my phone back now? Maybe something’s happened.”

“You can have it after we get to your place. I don’t want anyone using it to track us.” Marlow had taken the phone for her protection and her privacy when they set out for Boston. The prosecutors had dismissed them, and the jury was out for deliberation. They were as good as home. He could’ve returned it at any time, but the woman was a news junkie. The moment he let her have it, she’d go back to ignoring him. Marlow was not accustomed to being ignored by women. It wasn’t vanity, not entirely. He was a beautiful specimen of masculinity. But the dominance that made him third in his pack meant she should have paid attention, and she wasn’t. That made it hard to get what he needed from her.

“Pulling for the defense?” he asked, glancing out the window. It was better than looking at her. Why couldn’t she have been a short brunette instead of a leggy blonde? The Marrok should have sent someone else to deal with this human. Someone who liked being ignored and enjoyed sitting around idle while other people took care of business. Someone who was ambivalent about blondes.

“I was a witness for the prosecution,” Lindsey said dryly. They hadn’t been in Boston for long, just a couple of weeks, but the lush green canopy that sheltered the road had turned to gold. Marlow didn’t care for reminders of the changing seasons. He’d seen too many of them.

“Being their witness doesn’t mean you want ’em to win.”

He caught Lindsey scowling at him. “Les Heuter confessed to all those killings. He should face justice,” she snapped. “ Letting people run around murdering fae and werewolves makes the world more dangerous for everyone.”

“You’re the weird police, Agent Mayfield. A badge toting, silver bullet carrying agent of the Combined Nonhuman and Transhuman Relations Provisors. Subduing the things what go bump in the night is the reason Cantrip exists.”

“Cantrip doesn’t have the legal authority to pursue the fae or werewolves for existing, only when they break the law. We’re meant to enforce it. He raped and murdered children instead.” Maybe another human would have missed the steely note of rage that lowered her voice. She was well and truly angry, but Marlow wasn’t ready to believe any Tripper would abandon a fellow agent so easily. “All I want, all I have ever wanted, is to make the world a safer place for my daughter. Murderers don’t.”

His kind had gambled when they came into the light. The wolves had managed their public debut with all the charm and poise of a debutante stepping out into society for the first time. It had worked for the most part. The humans hadn’t rounded them up for death just yet, but the talking heads in D.C. were eager to give it a try. Marlow’s pack was still a secret, and they weren’t the only ones. But secrecy hadn’t been enough up in Boston, and the rogue Cantrip agent in those parts was a blatant idiot. The woman next to him was smart, funny, and saw too much for her own good. She’d also given a murderer what he needed to stalk and kill werewolves. Marlow didn’t like the thought of someone like her running the government’s secret registry of magical misfits. She wasn’t wrong, calling werewolves monsters, but she’d still ignored a real monster when she worked with Les Heuter.

Assignment like this, bodyguard to a pretty human lady, was right up his alley most times. But this one? Lindsey Mayfield was a threat to his kind. They’d all be safer if something happened to her. Marlow wished he’d been driving. He could’ve crashed the car and taken care of her before she pegged him for the monster that he was. “Heuter’s an extreme example, but I’ve heard enough offhand sympathy for his methods from your ranks to wonder. Laws don’t stop people from breaking ’em. If they did, I’d be out of a job.”

“My ranks? You think I helped him, don’t you?” Lindsey demanded. “You’re wrong. He had access to JINX over my objections. It won’t happen again.”

“JINX?”

“The jurisdictional index of nonhumans and exhumans. JINX.” Lindsey glared at him. If looks could kill, he’d have been in trouble. He itched to let the wolf out and show her who was in charge. “It’s a database, not a target list. I’m through sitting on my hands like some kind of glorified data monkey. If anyone else wants to misuse JINX, they’ll have to go through me.”

Marlow tried to remember if he’d heard the name before. He was pretty sure he hadn’t, but he’d had to wait outside the courtroom during her testimony. He made a mental note to put the name in his report for the Marrok. “Doesn’t look that way to me, not from what was on the news.”

“Things change. I’ve been arguing with my superiors for years about locking things down. It took this to make them listen. Only trained specialists will have access to the data we’ve gathered. No more agents, no more Heuters.”

“I thought you were the one that helped him. Wasn’t that why you testified?”

“No.” She spat the word at him. “If I’d known he was in there, I would have stopped him.”

The inconspicuous sedan took a right into the neighborhood where Lindsey lived. It was nicer than most feds could afford, but the wolves had run her financials and found nothing amiss. The Heuters weren’t bribing her for her testimony. Marlow let himself sink back in the seat. “Heuter’s trial, that made your JINX public. Lotta fae and werewolves out there with opinions about that, I’d imagine.” At least half of his pack was hoping he’d eliminate her before they left Boston, but the Marrok needed answers first. “Folks who might blame you for the names that got put in there and then wiped off the map. What makes you think they won’t take potshots at you?”

“I don’t. That’s why you’re here annoying me instead of doing whatever it is you usually do.”

“Very important marshal business,” Marlow supplied.

“Of course.” Lindsey was quiet for a moment. “I’m not out here to be a martyr, Marlow. The fae are dangerous and they count on us underestimating them. In some ways the werewolves are even worse. That doesn’t mean we should murder them.”

She wasn’t wrong about that. They were dangerous. Being classified as equal to the fae made his beast preen. “What does it mean?” he asked, his voice pitched low with the wolf’s influence.

“Les Heuter used my index as a weapon to murder innocents. He left his humanity behind voluntarily. The fae never had it, and I don’t believe for an instant that every werewolf is a willing recruit.” The rage that made her ball her fists in her lap was fit for a werewolf. Her voice was usually pleasant, a little husky, just enough to make Marlow think there were pay-per-minute phone lines she could work for if she got tired of being a fed. Just then she sounded more like a pissed off member of his pack than an expensive but worthwhile evening.

“Is that a fact?” Marlow retorted, tamping down on his beast. He couldn’t afford to slip up. Being attracted to her counted as a major mistake. A satisfying mistake, perhaps, but still a big one.

She turned to face him. “Don’t tell me you agree with what he did?”

“No, I don’t.” He’d been alive long enough to know that people liked Heuter would just keep killing and killing until they were killed themselves. “But the rest? I don’t know what to think.” And wasn’t that the truth. His Alpha was an obliging sort when it came to distractions of the curvaceous kind, but Marlow wasn’t sure if he wanted to kiss Lindsey Mayfield or just put her out of his misery.

“Les Heuter chose to be a monster, to leave every scrap of his humanity behind. He took pleasure in kidnapping and murdering children, Marlow. Little kids. I hope they throw the book at him. He’s different than most of them. He’s the kind of monster that needs killing.” She nearly growled. “And if they let him off, he better hope he never crosses my path again.”

Marlow yanked on his inner leash, the one he never let the beast slip past. Cantrip would never destroy their database. That a bad agent had used it to kidnap and kill the wolves and fae listed within only made it more useful, if anything. But he didn’t need his wolf’s senses to hear the truth in Lindsey’s words. A woman like that didn’t make promises lightly. Short of unmaking the thing, perhaps it was best to leave it in her capable hands.

Safer yet if he kept those hands out of his bed and his life, in that order. Their driver slowed down as they approached the neat row of brick townhomes where Lindsey made her home. Hers was at the end, with a full garage and private driveway behind. “I could report you for threatening a federal prisoner.” Marlow meant it as a distraction. Her lips twitched up in the beginnings of a smile.

“That doesn’t mean you will report me. You should remember that if the marshals ever have to deal with the fae. They always make the distinction.” The seatbelt clicked open under her hand.

“Somebody’s eager.” He grinned at her. “What’s the matter, trying to die in a car accident, or are you sick of me already?”

Lindsey rolled her eyes. “I want to rescue the babysitter from my daughter.”

A six year old was another good reason not to get involved with the pretty Tripper who growled when she was angry. Marlow didn’t do kids. “She’s behaving herself, don’t you worry.”

She shook her head. “And your people are still watching my house?”

The other marshals didn’t have his nose for trouble, but they were solid in a fight. Better the marshals service than her own agency. He didn’t like the thought of unknown Tripper agents who might not share her views on Heuter lurking near Lindsey’s home. “Yes, ma’am, they are. No threats, but the sitter said your girl’s been having one heck of a time playing in the leaves.”

That made Lindsey smile. “And you’re sure the babysitter is all right?”

Marlow tipped the brim of his ball cap at her. “Got the report right here on my phone.” The marshals service had agreed to the babysitter, run checks on her and all, but she wasn’t a fed. A werewolf was better than anything the humans could provide against the fae, so he’d sent one of the pack to take care of Lindsey’s kid. Jackie was a good wolf, but she was young. He didn’t want to leave her on her own any more than was necessary.

“I know, but Mia is a handful on the best of days. I’ve never had a sitter last this long, much less full time. I want to get in there before she quits on me.” They turned the corner to Lindsey’s house. Jackie had put carved pumpkins out on the front steps, where they grinned a cheery welcome. Their driver pulled around back into the driveway and left the engine idling.

“Don’t think you have anything to worry about there, ma’am. Been two weeks and she hasn’t quit yet.” He hopped out of the car and came around to open her door.

Lindsey frowned at him. “That’s easy for you to say. I’ve been looking for three years. Every sitter says she’s just too high energy.” Lindsey climbed out of the car. “U.S. Marshals don’t arrange babysitting outside of these kinds of situations, do they?”

Perish the thought. “Ma’am, if you’re trying to ask me to move in with you, you oughta at least buy me dinner first.”

“No, thank you,” she said dryly. “I saw you demolish those burgers last night. I can’t afford to feed you.” She really was his type. Marlow’s pack second thought he would go for any woman as long as she was breathing, but he was in a real mood for leggy blonde trouble just then. “Do you have kids? I never thought to ask.”

His libido died an early death. “No, ma’am,” he answered with a faint smile of his own. “I’m not real keen to be tied down. More the oat sowing type.”

She laughed easily, a warm sound that invited him to join in. His smile faded when he caught sight of Jackie.

The young wolf was standing on the back step of the house, a ball cap tugged low over her eyes. As a rule, Jackie didn’t wear ball caps. She’d started out in life as a beauty queen, and Marlow figured she’d be more comfortable in a tiara than a hat. She hurried down the steps, moving too fast for him to handle in an agitated state. Marlow stepped in between her and Lindsey without a moment’s thought. That one didn’t always remember she ranked beneath the rest of the pack.

The wolf’s eyes peeked up at him from Jackie’s pretty face, bright gold against her warm brown skin. No wonder she had a hat on. Marlow squeezed her hand, and the gold faded back into a brown so dark it was almost black. “Sir,” she murmured, tipping her chin just enough to count as submission. Marlow’s wolf settled in spite of the agitation that swirled all around her like a swarm of bees. “Agent Mayfield, ma’am.”

“Jackie? Honey, what’s wrong? Is it Mia?”

“No, ma’am, she’s just fine. She didn’t see it, thank God.”

“What happened?”

“The verdict. It came in after y’all landed. I tried to call you but nobody was answering.” Jackie’s voice shook not with tears but barely controlled rage. Her accent was thick with the Tennessee foothills, even though most of the time she sounded more like a bland midwestern TV reporter instead. “That jury up in Boston, they decided he was an innocent man. They set him free.” She looked past him at Lindsey. “She was in the other room, she didn’t see, ma’am, I promise she didn’t see.”

“Didn’t see what?” Lindsey asked sharply.

“What happened after.” Jackie’s hand shook in his. “He was talkin’ to some reporter out on the steps, free as a bird even after all he did to those poor babies, and then it just… It was so quiet. Everythin’ stopped, even your furnace quit runnin’. It was the fae. The one whose daughter they hurt. He rode up on a white horse and he killed Les Heuter dead, cut his head right off with the biggest sword I ever saw.”

The color drained out of Lindsey’s face. “Oh my God.” A curse escaped Marlow’s lips, polite company be damned.

Jackie swallowed. “That ain’t the worst of it. He declared war on all of us humans, ma’am. Called himself a funny name and made this grand declaration, and then they just – poof. Gone, just like that, and not even the werewolves could stop them.”

Marlow went cold. The fae weren’t supposed to be able to mess with them that badly. He’d heard of a few nasty incidents between the fae and the wolves up in Washington state and Canada, but the Marrok had come down on any fae that tried to control the wolves like a freight train. The Marrok’s own son was in Boston. If the fae could keep that one from moving, they were all screwed.

“Where’s Mia?” Lindsey demanded.

Jackie took a deep breath. Demands were bad with upset werewolves, but she was all controlled smiles when she looked at Lindsey again. “Front room, ma’am, coloring. I wanted her away from the television in case things got ugly. I guess they did.”

“Go inside,” Marlow told Agent Mayfield. “I’ll get your bags from the trunk.” And get her away from the agitated werewolf who wouldn’t be able to hold it together much longer. He caught a brief flash of relief from Jackie through the bond they shared. Everybody had limits, and the girl was close to hers.

Lindsey didn’t wait for confirmation, just brushed past Jackie, dress shoes clattering on the steps to burst into the house at almost a run. It was enough to make the wolf want to chase after her. He took a deep breath of his own, steadying his beast. Marlow didn’t rank third in his pack above all for nothing.

“Jackie,” he said, pitching his voice below the rumble of the car engine. “Get your things and come straight back.” 

He waited until he got a tight nod of acknowledgement from her before he turned back to the car. The driver he sent to join the protective detail, using the trial’s outcome as reason enough for the extra protection, but Marlow was done with letting anyone else have control. He kept his movements short and deliberate removing Lindsey’s luggage from the trunk and putting the bags inside the back door along with her cellphone. Then he pulled out his own phone, using the time it took Jackie to gather up her stuff and return to make arrangements to his satisfaction. His wolf was almost calm by the time he’d finished. 

Stress was still written in every line of Jackie’s body when the young wolf came back out of the house. She had a large suitcase balanced in one hand, and was upset enough she’d forgotten to pretend it was heavy, but set it back on its wheels when Marlow cleared his throat. He wrapped a hand over hers on the suitcase handle and felt some of the tension bleed out. Two weeks without the pack, watching a high strung human, was hard enough even without the strain of the trial verdict and fae response.

“Wait in the car,” he told her. “I need to check in with Agent Mayfield, and then I’ll take you home.” The pack was gathering, and he could already feel the growing unrest leaking back through the pack bonds. So much for a chance to rest. It was going to be a very long-ass day.

“All right.” Jackie hesitated. “Marlow?”

“What?”

“If it’s gonna be a war, whose side are we gonna be on?” Jackie asked quietly.

He hesitated. “I don’t know yet, darlin’. That decision’s above my pay grade.” It wasn’t a comforting thought. No matter whether the werewolves threw in with humanity or the fae, or just tried to abstain entirely, the future didn’t bode well for any of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for being so patient (and encouraging us to continue)! We're not quiiiiite done drafting this one up, but we're confident enough in the early parts that we'll be posting chapters as we can. I'm sure we'll pick things up after the release of the new book on May 7th!
> 
> This is a bigger piece, and so some of your familiar favorites like Sam, Rob, Alec, and Owen are planning on taking their sweet time showing up, because dramatic werewolves (and fae) are dramatic werewolves (and fae).
> 
> Thank you all again for your patience and encouragement, and we hope you enjoy!


	2. Werewolf Livable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's just before Thanksgiving, but Sam's found an inspector with an opening who can come take a look at Owen's project house. The inspector's verdict aside, there's still the problem of Owen's exile from the Alpha's home to tackle, but a temporary solution might exist in the form of a dilapidated carriage house apartment.

_Sam_

 

“Thanks again for makin’ time to come out, Bill,” I said, unlocking the front door of Owen’s project house. “I know you’re busy, especially with the holiday and all.” Every year, clients came out of the woodwork as soon as the pumpkin-flavored coffee went on sale, desperate to complete a facelift on this room or a remodel on that one before they hosted a holiday dinner. I’d spent more than one Thanksgiving eve trying to explain that flooring wasn’t one of those night-before sort of renos, no matter what folks saw on those reno shows on TV. I wasn’t the   
only contractor looking for a free spot in Bill’s calendar.

My favorite home inspector waved off my comment. “It’s no problem, Sam. Another client canceled, and the wife’s got half a dozen relatives over to start prepping the turkey and God knows what else for tomorrow. I’d go nuts stuck in the house right now.” He grinned. “I’d rather spend the morning in this house than stuck in mine.”

"You may change your tune once you see the inside," I warned him.

Bill shrugged. "We'll see. It's hard to beat that one place someone was running a combined turkey farm and meth lab out of before someone bought it as a fixer-upper. Either way, I'll give you a fair assessment."

I remembered the turkey-meth house with a sort of fondness only because that renovation job hadn't been my responsibility. "That's all I ask," I told him.

Owen, who had always been responsible for the pack’s Thanksgiving feast, was silent behind me. He should’ve been holed up in Alec’s kitchen with Jackie and Evelyn, roasting turkeys for the whole pack, not crawling through a derelict mansion. I’d told him he didn’t need to be here for this, but he’d come anyway.

This time we suited up in disposable tyvek coveralls and respirators before we went inside. I’d told Bill it was bad, so on went the protective gear even though Owen and I didn’t need it. Perks of being a werewolf, not that Bill knew about that. The three of us trooped inside to get the professional’s assessment of just how much needed fixing. Bill’s low whistle when he crossed the threshold, even muffled by the respirator, told me I’d guessed about right on the damage.

Bill’s good at his job, and I’d worked with him on a number of projects in the past. He’s nothing if not thorough, and he wouldn’t pad his estimates or sugar coat the problems. All told, we spent a couple hours going over the sad old house with a fine toothed comb. He found all the problems I’d noted, and a couple new ones to boot. Owen followed, and though I could sense him fretting, he stayed wordless and looming through the whole inspection. In some ways that was almost worse than if he’d ranted and raved. I’d had homeowners do that before when they were unhappy. Owen? Owen brooded. It made Bill nervous, and I could smell it even with the respirator, but he kept his professional face on so I ignored it.

We ended up back out on the sagging porch at the rear of the house. No kittens this time. Makita was probably busy covering my pillow with fur at home, and the abatement company the humane society recommended had used special traps to catch and remove the rest of her family to better homes than this tumbledown wreck, along with a family of possums and a hungry raccoon. I pulled off my respirator, sweating even in the cooler air outside. The damn thing might be necessary to keep up the fiction that I was human, but I didn’t like the way it blunted my sense of smell.

Bill took off his own respirator and gave his head a shake. “You weren’t kidding when you told me it was in rough shape,” he said, his tone almost regretful. "It's not turkey-meth house bad, but it's still pretty bad."

“Think we stand a chance of fixin’ it up?” I asked.

He took a deep breath. “Might be cheaper to knock it down and start over again,” he said cautiously, echoing what I’d told Owen after our first walk through.

“Client would rather fix it,” I said, nodding in Owen’s direction.

“Well, if that’s the case, you’ve got a laundry list of things to deal with before you can even start on the remodel,” Bill said. “I’d estimate you’re looking at a year to eighteen months and a budget of over a million easy if you still want to go ahead with it. And that’s assuming nothing else crops up in the way of problems or delays. You already need an exterminator, an engineer, an electrician, a roofer, and a plumber. You’re gonna have to work with the historical society, which means a historian, maybe even an archaeologist depending.” He snorted. “Or an exorcist.”

Inwardly I winced. That was about what I’d figured privately, and would put it right up with some of the most expensive remodels I’d ever worked on, but this was Owen’s call, not mine. I glanced at him for approval. 

“It’s fine.” Owen’s words were almost dismissive, and the only thing he’d said since we got here.

I raised a brow. Maybe that hat shop of his was a more lucrative business than I’d imagined. “Okay then. I’ve got the paperwork on my desk at home, so once we’re past Thanksgiving, I’ll get an engineer and some guys in to deal with the structural issues and start demo work if you’ll sign off on it, Bill.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Good luck on this one, Sam. It’ll be beautiful if you can pull it off.”

“That’s what I aim to do,” I replied. We shook hands, and Bill headed back around to the front of the house where he’d left his truck. With the human gone, I stripped out of the too-warm coveralls. Owen was doing the same. They might keep clothes clean, but they held too much body heat for my taste.

“Eighteen months if there are no problems,” Owen said.

I shucked off the last of the protective gear, tossing it in a pile with my friend’s. “Long time.”

“Much too long to live with you.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “And even if part of it were livable, which it ain’t, I wouldn’t recommend trying to stay in the house during a renovation. Every homeowner I’ve done work for that tried has ended up stayin’ with friends or goin’ to a hotel eventually.”

Owen favored me with a rictus grin. “I’m a little short on friends, Sam.”

Which made me feel like a heel, because I didn’t have so many friends in the pack that I could discount Owen, either. “Y’know my door’s always open to you,” I said. “But we tried that, and it don’t work for long.” I sighed, frustrated at the lack of solutions. “There’s gotta be some happy medium, some short term lease or somethin’, some place you c’n stay while we work on the house.”

He cocked his head to the side. “How long would it take to fix up the apartment?”

“What apartment?” I asked, and he pointed to the building tucked into a rear corner of the property, almost entirely hidden by a screen of trees. It had probably started life as a carriage house and been repurposed as a garage around the time automobiles became a thing. I hadn’t seen the carriage house on the first visit, between the amount of work the main house needed and wrestling the world’s angriest little feline fluffball into the cab of my truck. I shrugged one shoulder. “I dunno. Let’s take a look.”

Owen led me through the overgrowth and pulled open a side door. The door frame was a little crooked, but it looked functional enough. I followed him inside, only to stop short at the sheer amount of junk that had been crammed into the building. I lost sight of my friend immediately.

“Owen?”

“The stairs are on the far side,” he called from somewhere within the trash pile. It took a little bit to get a sense of the place, what with all the crates and boxes, but it was bigger than it looked under all the junk. Wooden pallets supported crates and boxes, and in one case, an old fashioned car under a tarp with a good four or five decades' worth of dust and mouse droppings on top.

“Cats must not have been in here,” I muttered.

It was a hoarder’s paradise, and if the main level was this crowded with stuff, I cringed to think about the second floor. The joists looked stable enough from where I was standing, at least. There weren’t any visible holes like the main house. The wiring was too old for comfort, but at least I could get an electrician in before winter really hit.

It took me the better part of ten minutes to thread my way through the mess and make it up the stairs. Owen’s a good bit smaller than I am, and I had to unbury myself from three different avalanches of old newspapers, raincoats, and shoeboxes full of glass insulators. Who needs two dozen raincoats? Owen tapped his foot impatiently while I tested the stairs and determined they wouldn’t crumble under my weight, though Bill might’ve made me go for a tetanus shot if he’d laid eyes on the rusted out steps.

“Well, all the stuff needs to go, but that’ll just get tossed in the Dumpster. How bad is it up there?”

“Different-bad,” he replied. I climbed the stairs and saw what he meant. The ground floor was full of random junk, but upstairs was a little more thematic. Every surface was piled with yellowed paperbacks and hardcover books, until they blocked out the windows and kept everything in perpetual gloom. I whistled at the sight.

“So what do you think?” Owen prompted.

“Well,” I said turning in a slow circle, “I can see one bright side to this.”

“What’s that?”

“With this many books here, that floor is solid or it’d’ve collapsed under the weight a long time ago.” I poked a book pile and watched it wobble.

“So how long do you think it would take to fix up?”

I squinted at the gloom-shrouded rafters. There were some nominal partitions, though I wasn’t sure how well built they were, as if someone had made an effort to convert the barn-like loft into rooms in the past but given up part way through. For all I knew, the walls might just be more stacked books.

“If there’s no leaks, and the structure’s good, I can get it werewolf-livable in maybe a week or two, I think.”

“Werewolf livable?” Owen sounded wry. “Someone lived in here not that long ago. The seventies?”

I was in grade school in the seventies, but there was no point telling Owen that. I knew he was older than me, and old wolves were fragile. It was better not to push. “Getting it to human-standard code would take longer, but as long as it don’t get too cold too fast, I don’t think you’ll get frostbite,” I ventured.

“Charming, Sam.”

“You did ask,” I said. “Either way, it’ll take less time than gettin’ the whole house to that point. I saw electrical on my way in. This place have water?”

Owen nodded. “There’s a bath and a small kitchen at the far end.”

“Too much to hope for central heating?” I ventured.

“Radiators.”

I grunted. That meant a furnace with a boiler, probably somewhere in the junk below. I just had to hope the thing wasn’t coal fired.

“How soon can we start?”

I shrugged. “Whenever you want. The Dumpster got dropped off this mornin’. It’s in the wrong place, but movin’ it under one of those windows shouldn’t be hard for us. Then we can just toss stuff out. Easier than tryin’ to move through the mess downstairs.”

He took a long look around the big room. “All right. Let’s get to work.”


	3. Misadventures in Babysitting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam's packmate Jackie has her hands full with the young daughter of a local Cantrip agent and Thanksgiving prep. But if there's one rule in babysitting, it's that what can go wrong will - and when your babysitter is a secret werewolf, the scale of potential problems is a lot bigger.

_Jackie_

 

The little bakery that Jackie liked to walk to for breakfast was always busy. With Thanksgiving right around the corner, the place had gone from busy to downright packed. It was enough to make a poor little werewolf feel antsy about the crowds of people all around her, even though the crowds were mostly octogenarians in search of holiday pies. Hard enough to be alone in a place like this, but Jackie had a little one to protect.

“You never let me have any fun,” the little girl said. The fluffy yarn of her hat muffled every other word. Jackie tugged the hat band up so that it only covered Mia’s forehead instead of her mouth and nose. “I could have put ten whole biscuits in it.”

Jackie grinned. It was hard not to enjoy Mia’s company. The little girl was all but bursting with cheer, amplified by all the syrup she’d drowned her pancakes in. She was small for her age, with pale skin, shiny brown hair and blue eyes as big as saucers. It wasn't the perfect, china doll curls or the little button nose that got her into trouble, though. It was the dimples on either side of her gap-toothed smile. “Your hat can’t possibly hold all those great big biscuits, little bit.”

“Can too.”

“All right.” She made Mia put her mittens on before they stepped out of the bakery into the autumn chill. Werewolves didn’t feel the cold like normal everyday sort of folks, especially not the way little children did. “So let’s just say we put ten biscuits in your hat.”

Mia pursed her lips. “Is this gonna be a story problem? I did a story problem that had a lady with a van full of watermelons. I like watermelons, but why would you fill a van with them? I don’t like watermelons that much.”

“Then you best not buy a whole van full of them, especially before you get yourself a driver’s license,” Jackie said. “And no. The biscuits are much bigger than a word problem.”

“Bigger than math?”

Jackie nodded.

Mia skipped a few squares ahead on the sidewalk, dancing over the lines and cracks without touching them. “But I wanted biscuits.”

“I know.” Jackie caught the little girl’s hand in hers when they reached the intersection. “Stay beside me, if you please.”

Mia bounced in place while they waited for the light to change. “But why can’t I put biscuits in my hat?”

“Because, sugar, your poor hat can’t hold one little lick of gravy.”

Mia’s eyes were as round as saucers. “Biscuits with no gravy?”

“Not one drop.” Jackie held up her own hat, more a fashion accessory than a necessity. She hadn’t felt cold in years, not since they turned her into a werewolf. “If you take a real good look between the yarns, you can see my hand through my hat.”

“It’s got holes in it!” Mia crowed. “So it can’t hold gravy ’cause it’s full of holes!”

“There you go, little bit. You got it.” Jackie smiled and led her across the street. It wasn’t a long walk to Mia’s house, maybe ten minutes, or twenty when the girl was distracted. Mia liked to pick up every shiny thing she saw, and a number of things that weren’t shiny at all. When Jackie had started sitting for her a couple months past, they’d had to stop every two feet or so to look at something. It had started with pleas to take home dead birds from underneath the bushes and quickly escalated to a busy wasp’s nest and all of its residents. No wonder her poor momma couldn’t keep a human babysitter. Mia had more energy than six or seven little ones put together, and an even bigger penchant for trouble.

Mia eyed her thoughtfully. “I betcha Mr. Marlow would let me put gravy in _his_ hat. His hat don’t have holes.”

“Doesn’t, not don’t,” Jackie corrected. “Why don’t you ask him the next time you see him?”

The little girl darted away to kick a rock down the sidewalk. “He hasn’t come backs in forever, because Mommy is done with the trial. How come I still got you but not Mr. Marlow?”

Jackie bit back a smile. “I’m not a marshal, I’m your babysitter. I come around whenever your momma needs help watching after you, little bit. Mr. Marlow, he’ll only come back if something your momma does for work means she needs a little help with herself, too.” She held her hand out before they reached the end of the block. She was more than fast enough to catch the little girl if she ran off again, but nobody human would know that. There weren’t many folks driving around what with the holidays, just a pest control van a few doors down, but it always paid to be careful. Mia twined her fingers with hers and walked along in silence past a few more houses.

“Mommy should kiss him.”

“What?”

“Mommy should kiss Mr. Marlow, ’cause then I could put the gravy in his hat.”

“Oh.” Jackie bit back a laugh. Marlow was rather free with his affections. Every time the pack got together, he smelled like a different brand of ladies’ perfume. She couldn’t imagine Marlow with the little girl’s no-nonsense mother, though. Mia’s momma didn’t seem the kind to tolerate a man who slept around behind her back. “Well, if you see the marshal again, I expect you’d best tell him that, and see what he says.”

Mia took a running leap over a fallen leaf. “Can we call and tell him so _now_?”

“I bet you he has work right now, little bit. I’m sure your momma will call us as soon as she’s free, and you can tell her you’d like to speak to him then.”

“Okay.” Mia curled her fingers around Jackie’s as they turned the corner toward her home. Watching the little girl might have been an order from Marlow over the summer months, but there was a kinship there. Jackie’s momma had raised her almost all by her lonesome, too. Spending time with Mia and Lindsey soothed the lingering hurt of losing her human family to the pack. It reminded her that not every human was a monster.

The house stood at the corner of a row of well kept townhomes on its own detached lot. It was a stately matriarch of a home, all red brick with black shutters beside the windows, and a neat wrought iron fence enclosing the small front yard with its big ash tree. When she’d started working for Lindsey, Jackie had parked out on the curb and used the grand front door, still festooned with glittery craft pumpkins from Halloween. Nowadays, Lindsey had her park in the garage and use the back door like she was part of the family.

Mia dropped her hand as soon as they reached the big old corner lot where her house was situated and ran around the hedges to where the driveway was hidden. Jackie followed her with the bakery bags laden with treats she’d picked up for the grand feast at the Alpha’s table.

“You keep on doing cartwheels up that drive, little bit, and your breakfast might come back up for a curtain call.”

Mia vaulted from her hands to her feet. “You mean like throwing up?”

“Yes, ma’am. And that would just be awful sad considering tomorrow’s holiday. I bet if you got sick on me, your momma would fret you were coming down with something, and might not let y’all have pie tomorrow.”

“No pie?” Mia echoed.

“Not one bite if you get sick.”

Mia sized her up. “Can I have pie for lunch?”

“No, little bit, we’re making fried chicken for lunch.”

Mia’s brows furrowed deep on her little face. “ _With_ pie.”

Her wolf stirred at the order. Jackie took a deep breath and waited until her eyes felt human normal. Her wolf was a predator, not to be trusted with so precious and fragile a thing as a child. Jackie had no intention of letting her get a peek at Mia. “We can call your momma and ask about the pie, but it’s her choice, not yours. C’mon now, sugar, let’s go inside.”

Mia raced ahead of her to the back door, the charms on her keychain jingling in her hand. “I got the door!” she hollered back. “First one inside gets to pick the pie!”

The wolf took Jackie’s competitive streak and made it miles wider, but she didn’t need to compete with a little girl when all Mia wanted was to push her buttons. Resisting was winning, from a certain point of view. Jackie set the bags down on the entry table and hurried to the alarm box. It had a decent timer, but Mia never thought to reset the thing. Calling the little girl’s mother at work to disable the shrieking alarm was not in Jackie’s plans for the day.

The little system alert window at the top of the alarm box was a pleasant shade of green, with the word OFF flashing on the right hand side. Lindsey Mayfield was a federal agent and fiercely protective of her only child. In the months Jackie had been sitting for them, the alarm had never, ever been turned off.

Her wolf stirred again, and Jackie slid out of her coat and shoes. “Mia?” she called further into the house. “You aren’t supposed to turn the alarm system all the way off, little bit. You’ll make your momma worried.” The box was too high up on the wall for little fingers to get into the system with ease, and Lindsey had told her just that morning that Mia didn’t have the new set of codes for the alarm box.

Jackie’s feet never made a sound on the hardwood floors. The house was quiet like the woods during the hunt. Every hair on the back of her neck stood on end. She sniffed the air, but her nose was never as good in her human shape as it was when she was the wolf, and the fresh pies in the bags from the bakery drowned out most everything else in earthy cinnamon, sugar, and peppery cloves. “Mia? Little bit, where are you?”

Something shattered in the kitchen. Jackie spun toward the sound and caught a jumbled glimpse of a man in a black ski mask lurking in the mudroom door. She slammed him back into the washer, sending detergent pods flying every which way. The harsh chemical scent of the burst soap packets dulled her nose and turned the floor slick as ice. She stepped wrong and smacked her head on the corner of the washer hard enough to make stars dance before her eyes.

“Get her!” the man in the mask wheezed.

A wet, heavy cloth slapped against her face from behind. Jackie took a breath without thinking. The floor tilted underfoot, worse than a summer funhouse ride, and her wolf surged to the fore with a silent snarl. This was her territory, and she would defend it. She ripped the cloth from her mouth and grabbed hold of the man who’d slapped it there, heaving him over her hip into the heavy steel fire door that led to the attached garage.

The first man hit her hard in the chest, knocking the wind from her lungs. Jackie staggered to one knee. No matter how hard she tried she couldn’t seem to get her breath. One of them shoved her down into the stinking cloth, and the world spun away into darkness.

The smell of car exhaust overwhelmed her senses when she woke. Everything felt fuzzy and faraway, and there was a sweet, cloying taste in her mouth that just wouldn’t go away. The ground beneath her shoulder was cold and hard. Jackie recognized the little colored flakes in the paint on the floor of Lindsey’s garage. Someone had bound her hands and feet. Her eyes focused on a limp little bundle of pink and lavender cloth a few feet away.

_Mia_.

She lost time fighting the wolf back into submission. She couldn’t afford to let the wolf out, not with the little girl laid out across the way like a feast for the raging monster Jackie kept locked away inside. She needed to be human and thinking to get them out of this.

She heard voices from inside the house, muffled by the garage door. She didn’t know how they’d knocked her out. She had to move fast. Whoever had done this had tied her up with rope, bless their hearts. Maybe it would have been enough to stop a human, but then, Jackie had stopped being human a long, long time ago.


	4. Hoarder's Paradise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Owen take a crack at the mess in the carriage house apartment, which stirs memory and introspection. Their attempts at renovation are abruptly interrupted from the last place they expect.

_Sam_

 

Owen’s carriage house was in better shape than the main house. It had a sound roof and a stable foundation, and Owen claimed the electrical breaker was younger than Thomas Edison. We just couldn’t find the blasted thing in all the stuff piled against the walls upstairs and down. It was a dusty hunt through piles of wooden crates and tarps covered in decades of mouse droppings just to find the boiler for the heating system. I was grateful to see it ran on gas instead of needing fuel oil or coal, not that anyone had removed the cobweb coated ash bucket and assorted coal shovels from the converted garage. I had yet to find the thermostat, but it was warm enough for a pair of werewolves to work.

Upstairs, things were far more modern. I stumbled into the bedroom door behind a stack of ancient nature magazines and found an assorted collection of Hawaiian print muumuus and what must have been someone's Sunday best at one time, before the coat and matching dress became home to untold generations of mice. The furniture was older, and I didn’t care for the look of the sagging, lumpy mattress on the little old bedstead, but all of the clothes and books were from the twentieth century. There was a new sleeping bag that smelled faintly of Owen rolled up at the foot of the bed, which told me where my friend had been crashing after he left my home.

The push button light switches in the kitchen had me twitching over the cost of upgrading the wiring, but somebody had invested some time and money in there at one point. The honeycomb tile walls were clean of everything but dust and spiders, and the gas stove with all its drawers, doors and burners had been top of the line around the Great Depression. Adding up the costs of bringing the place up to code was giving me a great depression of my own.

The bathroom was behind the kitchen, and while I’d seen worse, my main concern was whether or not I’d even fit in the cramped space. My nose told me it’d been left in decent repair, at least. It’d probably started life as a storage closet before someone decided to make the place into an apartment and ran plumbing as minimally as possible. The claw foot tub, pedestal sink, and toilet with its tank mounted high on the wall with a pull chain flush were definitely vintage. And if Owen ever decided to modernize, I could think of remodelers who’d pay a mint if I could remove those tiles intact. It looked like a room designed for hobbits, though, not hulking werewolves who stood over six feet tall. If I needed to use the restroom, I might be better off finding a corner of the overgrown yard instead.

I found Owen back in the main room, moving piles of paperback novels away from a door that led outside. Someone decades before had added a separate outside entrance so tenants wouldn’t have to wade through the junk pile below as we’d done to get inside. One look at the wobbly steel railing on the crumbling exterior stairs convinced me to stay inside. I didn’t think werewolves could get tetanus, but I wasn’t going to volunteer to test the theory. The junk inside was an easier fix.

“Did you know her?”

“The avid reader? Oh, yes. But I had no idea she’d brought so many books up here.”

“Not her. _Her._ ” I nodded at the framed portrait on the far wall. I’m a poor student of history, but it reminded me of old fashioned Civil War era paintings of southern belles. Dust and grime dulled the surface, and the frame looked like someone had rescued it from a fire, but the plain looking woman painted there was the only decoration in the whole apartment. She certainly didn’t resemble Owen, not with her narrow mouth and mousy brown hair, but there was still something interesting about the look of mischief on her face. It reminded me of Rob.

Owen followed my gaze and said nothing for a long moment. “She never lived here,” he finally replied, going to shift another stack of books. It wasn’t quite the answer I was looking for, but I suspected it was all he was willing to give. I changed the subject without being prompted.

“Do you realize not one of these things has the same cover, but they all show the same man?” I grumbled, shoveling a stack of yellowed romance novels out the window to the Dumpster below. The mouse nest Hawaiian muumuus and other clothing had been the first things in the trash.

The piles of books were taller than my friend, but his mood had improved considerably once we’d started working. I caught a glimpse of his bright red hair over top of a book plastered with a sword-swinging buttery spread salesman in a plaid skirt. “Sammy, my boy, surely you of all men would understand the appeal of rolling fields of oiled pectorals as far as the eye can see?”

“D’you have any idea how much sawdust sticks to that stuff?” I picked up the book and eyed the smirking model. Those ads the models starred in never did make much sense. Who could look at something as greased up as his skin and believe it was butter? “I’ll pass, thanks.”

“Suit yourself.” Owen carried another load of books to the window. 

“It ain’t that I don’t appreciate the view,” I amended. “But’ve you ever tried to read one of these silly things? They’re plum ridiculous. It’s like—” I cut myself off, feeling my face heat.

Owen tossed his books into the dumpster, and paused to look back at me. “Like what?”

“Nothin’,” I muttered, scooping up another stack which mostly featured ladies whose shirts wouldn’t stay on being held by similarly shirtless men. 

Owen grinned at me. “Oh, no. You aren’t getting out of this so easily.”

It was good to see him smile, even if it was at my expense. “My momma had a bunch of these. It’s been decades but I’ve flipped through ’em. It’s like the people who wrote some of these old books ain’t never… Like they never seen another person in the buff before, much less had carnal relations with ’em,” I finished, my face burning. I threw my next armload of books out the window a little harder than I should have, and pages fluttered up like bizarre snowflakes to settle across the weedy backyard.

“Carnal relations, Sam? Really?”

“My momma raised me to be polite,” I countered.

His smirk showed more teeth than manners allowed. “The next time you’re up at the house, take a look through Alec’s library. They wrote better things back in the day. Illustrated them, at that.” He glanced at the stacks of yellowed books. “A lot of the new ones are good, too. Romance is an art too many men neglect.”

“I think I’m doin’ just fine without, thanks,” I said. He just grinned and went back for more books.

We worked in companionable quiet, clearing the piles away. Slowly bits of floor and old furnishings began to emerge from the stacks. The kitchen and bathroom were almost usable, or would be once I located the breaker panel and the water main, and even the bedroom was mostly unearthed. Owen stopped by an old desk, his head cocked to the side. I tossed more books into the Dumpster and glanced over at him.

“Somethin’ up?”

He traced his fingers through the dust on the glossy surface. It was an antique, well made from the look of it, with carved pulls and letter files under the rolltop cover. “I haven’t seen this since…”

I walked over to take a look. What I saw brought a low whistle to my lips. “Nice piece under all this dust,” I mused. “Antique. They don’t make ’em like this anymore. Makes you wonder what else might be stashed up here.” I hadn’t missed his comment about having seen the piece before. It got some gears turning in my head. One of the things I’d been warned about repeatedly as a werewolf, though, was to be careful about living too much in the past.

Owen shook himself like he was wet. “It does, doesn’t it?”

It was enough to get him moving again, but I worried. The desk he’d stopped to look at was at least a century old. I’d always known Owen was older than me, but I wasn’t sure how old. Werewolves weren’t very stable as we aged. “So,” I said, switching topics again, “about tomorrow…”

“You shouldn’t be alone on Thanksgiving, Sam.”

“Well neither should you,” I told him. “If I gotta go to the pack house cuz Rob’s not here, why can’t you come along? It’s a holiday. I think Alec’ll understand.” It was the first holiday without Rob since the year he'd vanished on me, back after we first met. I had to put in appearances with the pack, most years, and it was best if Rob didn’t join me, but Thanksgiving with the wolves was an improvement over my other prospects. I dreaded spending another night alone in my bed without him. I hadn’t realized how much I’d come to count on him being there until I lost him again.

“No, Sam,” Owen said, pulling the roll top down to cover the dusty surface of the desk. “I’m not welcome in that house.”

I reached for another stack of books. “But he can’t just shut y’out forever, can he? That ain’t right.”

“He’s Alpha. He can do whatever he wants.” Owen shoved a box stuffed with paper out the window. “He won’t make an exception for me and you shouldn’t ask him to.”

I sighed. “I guess you’d know him better’n me. Still don’t seem right, though. Gotta admit, I ain’t really lookin’ forward to it. Much as the pack helps my wolf, I ain’t gonna have a lotta friends there.” Certainly nobody as close to me as Owen. Though Miss Evelyn was kind to me, she wasn’t in the same weight class as my old friend, and Miss Jackie was sweet but awful shy in a crowd. If I sat by her, we’d be lucky to get a word out between us over the whole meal. Owen, though, he was the closest I had to a brother. I’d never felt left out when he was there.

“Who’s cooking?” Owen demanded. Chips of gold showed in his hazel eyes. His wolf was peeking out at me.

“Uh… Evelyn?” I guessed.

He growled. “She doesn’t brine the turkey properly. And she thinks it’s acceptable to serve guacamole.”

“I like guacamole,” I said mildly.

“Guacamole is not Thanksgiving food. Turkey. Cranberries. Dressing. Corn, beans, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes—”

“I bet Jackie’s bringin’ pie. If you aren’t gonna come, maybe I can bring you some leftovers.”

Owen scowled. “I do not need a pity pie!”

“It’s just some pie, Owen,” I soothed. “I bet she’d be tickled to wrap some up for you.”

“She doesn’t know how to make it. She doesn’t cut the butter in right. A proper pie should have layer upon flaky layer in the crust—”

“It’s a _pie_.”

His eyes narrowed, and he opened his mouth on another retort, but it didn’t come. Owen went stiff across the desk, his eyes blazing gold. Before I could ask what was wrong, a wave of pain crashed into me. I staggered, knocking over several piles of books in my effort to stay on my feet. My shoulder felt like it was on fire. Last time I’d hurt anything that bad, I’d been tossed off a train bridge into a river.

It took me a moment to figure out it wasn’t me that was hurting. I didn’t have any injuries. It was coming through the pack bonds. “Who?” I rasped to Owen as I blinked my vision back into focus so the apartment would stop swimming before my eyes.

He had both hands braced on the dusty desk. Given his rank was higher than mine, he’d have gotten it worse than I did. The Alpha would have taken the brunt. “Jackie.” His voice was reedy and thin.

“Is she…?”

“Not yet.” His eyes snapped open, still pure gold with the wolf’s rage. I ducked my head in submission before I realized I’d moved. “Get the truck.”


	5. Shot in the Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Across town from Owen's very own Hoard-a-Lot, Agent Lindsey Mayfield of CNTRP receives a call that shakes the very foundations of her world. Good thing there's a werewolf around to pick up the pieces.

_Marlow_

 

“Got a minute?”

Lindsey Mayfield looked up from the pair of computer monitors that occupied most of her desk. Phone calls weren’t safe from werewolf hearing, not that she knew what he was, but the privacy screens kept him from seeing what she was working on. “Don’t tell me we have another trial debrief.”

“Nope.” There had been a number of those, at his office and hers, after the fae debacle at the end of the trial. He was still trying to catch up on weeks of backlogged work. From the number of files sitting next to her computer, Lindsey was feeling the strain, too. “Got a tip that my latest warrant might go bump in the night with the other creepy crawlies. Boss asked me to have you run the name before we go after ’em.”

She frowned. “I’m sorry about what happened to those marshals in Texas, but I told you when we came back from Boston. JINX is not guaranteed for accuracy. I’m not going to violate someone’s rights like Les Heuter just because—”

“Relax, I’ve got a warrant for the search.” For all his misgivings about leaving any information in human hands, Lindsey was all right. Even when all the fae vanished after declaring war on humanity, her database remained protected. It wasn’t the kind of thing to end up on the nightly news or anything, but the Marrok and Marlow’s Alpha had their ears to the ground for even the slightest rumor. Nobody had turned it against them since Heuter’s arrest, not yet anyway. They were still trying to figure out what wolves might be listed as such in Cantrip’s files. He wished them the joy of it.

“You could have called instead of coming all this way.”

Marlow grinned. “C’mon, you know you missed me.”

She rolled her eyes. “Like the plagues of Egypt.”

“No threats, then? The fae have left you alone since Boston?”

“The fae are gone. The ones that we were watching, every reservation – just gone.” Lindsey rubbed her arms like she was cold, though the office seemed comfortable enough to him. “There have been a few protests from the Bright Future chapter at UK, but nothing serious.”

“What do a bunch of college students want with Cantrip?”

Lindsey grimaced. “They want us to martyr Heuter. To hunt down anything that’s even a little bit weird and…”

“End it.”

“Yes.”

“Not fun.”

“Not legal,” Lindsey retorted. “None of the laws to either turn werewolves into endangered species or open season on hunting them have passed.”

“Yet,” Marlow drawled. “Give ’em time.”

Lindsey scowled into her coffee. “It isn’t justice, Marlow. The fae… I don’t know what they really are. No one does. But they can and do have human families. Human children. So do the werewolves, and they all start out human.”

He let her meet his eyes without challenging her. Not every dominant wolf could resist the urge to put an uppity, loudmouthed human in their place. Marlow was no different than most in that regard, but he happened to agree with her. It would be a damn shame if Cantrip hunted them down. Some wolves would die, but it would be a bloodbath for the humans.

She looked away first, not because she was acknowledging his dominance but because her desk phone was ringing. Most humans were capable of recognizing a predator in their midst, even if they couldn’t put a name to the itchy feeling and lizard hindbrain behavior it triggered. Unfortunately, Lindsey Mayfield lacked that survival skill. No wonder he wanted to take her out to dinner. He had a thing for headstrong women.

“Sorry, it’s my sitter. Do you mind?”

“Go ahead, I’ll wait.” He turned his body a little away from her desk to give her the illusion of privacy. Lindsey’s kid was a handful, even with a werewolf for a babysitter. He hoped the little girl hadn’t gotten into mischief that might cause trouble for Jackie.

“Jackie?”

The call wasn’t on speaker, but that didn’t matter much. Werewolf hearing made real privacy impossible short of using a secure booth. Marlow heard the man in the other end loud and clear. “Listen closely and don’t react. I have your daughter.” The voice on the line was weirdly distorted, probably using one of those filters people used to keep from being recognized.

Lindsey sucked in a sharp breath. Years of practice let Marlow breathe normally through the surge of rage from his wolf. There was no way that anybody could get that kid without going through Jackie first, and no one touched his pack. Jackie was the lowest wolf in the pack. She wasn’t submissive, but she was the one thing the whole pack fought hardest to protect

“Is that so.” A human might not have caught the faint tremor in Lindsey’s voice. Her heart rate jumped like a cornered animal’s, but outwardly she gave no sign there was trouble. “Can you prove it?”

Marlow was careful not to give away that he’d heard. Keeping his motions deliberate and unconcerned, he pulled out his own phone like he was checking messages, and tapped out a text to inform the Alpha.

“Do what I tell you, and you’ll get her back in one piece,” the kidnapper said.

She lowered her voice a little. “Let me speak to Jackie, then we’ll talk.”

“Your sitter can’t come to the phone right now. She’s having a little nap. Listen close. You have access to something I want, and I have something you want. We’re going to arrange a trade. If you try and go to the police or the FBI, you’ll never see either of them again. We’ll know if you alert the authorities. Am I clear?”

“I don’t have money,” Lindsey said. “I might be able to get—”

“Not what I’m after,” the kidnapper cut her off. “I have your cell number. I’ll call with further instructions. All you have to do is follow them and no one gets hurt.”

Marlow hit send on the text message he’d composed, quietly closed his own phone and pocketed it, still pretending not to listen. He could smell the fear and rage on Lindsey now. He was going to enjoy murdering whoever was responsible for this. Lindsey was under _his_ protection.

“How do I know you’re not lying to me?” Lindsey asked. Smart lady, not letting them go without at least trying to validate what she was being told. With the voice distortion, Marlow couldn’t tell if the speaker was lying or not. It didn’t matter. If he had touched one hair on the kid’s head, much less Jackie’s, he was a dead man.

The purse beside Lindsey’s desk chirped briefly. “I’ve sent a picture to your phone,” the kidnapper said. “That’s all you get. No more ques—”

A panicked yell in the background interrupted the kidnapper. Marlow heard a confused clattering followed by more shouting. Even with werewolf hearing, it was hard to make out what was happening on the line. He thought he heard a wolf’s snarl in the midst of the chaos.

“What’s going on?” Lindsey’s professional mask had begun to slip. “Answer me!”

“Werewolf!” someone else screamed. “Shoot it, shoot it now!”

He was aware of the gunshot, aware of the click when the call dropped, but it was nothing next to the pain that hit him like a battering ram. He braced himself against Lindsey’s desk, forcing it back and the wolf along with it. He couldn’t afford to lose control, not here, not now. The back of his shirt stuck to his skin with cold sweat by the time he could speak. “Lindsey? What’s wrong?” He sounded hoarse, but that couldn’t be helped. Hoarse was better than going four legged and furry in a Cantrip office, where the smattering of folks working before the holiday were bound by law to carry guns loaded with silver.

“Oh, God. I – I have to go. I have to – I – keys, need my keys—”

“Lindsey.” Marlow pushed past the pain the pack bonds had dumped on him and put enough authority in his voice to freeze her in her tracks. It didn’t always work on humans, but she was flustered enough that it stopped her. “What’s going on? That wasn’t your sitter.” She’d gotten loud enough at the end of the call that he didn’t have to pretend everything was okay anymore.

“Agent Mayfield?” A unfamiliar man with salt and pepper hair cut in an expensively conservative style poked his head out of the back office. While he’d visited the Cantrip offices a few times, Marlow had only met a handful of the people who worked there, mostly their security officers. The majority of his focus had been Lindsey, not her coworkers. The newcomer’s eyes settled on Marlow and his expression clouded over. “Is this man bothering you? Do I need to call for security?”

“What? No, he’s – no – I have to go, I, there’s an emergency at home—”

“I’ll drive you,” Marlow broke in. “You’re in no condition to get behind a wheel like this.” He wasn’t a great deal better, but he could fake it. Jackie wasn’t dead, as far as he could tell, but even an injured submissive wolf was dangerous to humans. There was no way he was letting Lindsey face that alone, even if it meant revealing himself.

“But— You needed that warrant checked.” She sounded distracted and was trying to find her keys again.

“It can wait. This is more urgent,” Marlow insisted. If she wouldn’t let him come along, he’d have to follow on his own.

“What’s going on here? What emergency?” The strange man had come to stand behind Lindsey’s desk, arms crossed over his broad chest. Everything about him screamed boss. He was in decent shape for a human in his early fifties, and eyeing Marlow with a mixture of suspicion and hostility. If he’d been a wolf, his posture could have been taken for protective. This was someone who was accustomed to being deferred to and obeyed, but Marlow didn’t answer to him.

His words seemed to galvanize Lindsey into a decision. She sucked in a breath, both hands gripping her purse tight. “Seth. I – If I tell you, it—it can’t go any further than this.” Her voice was tight with anxiety and strain. “They said no police or FBI. Cantrip and the U.S. Marshals aren’t either of those. It’s splitting hairs, but…” She trailed off, but Marlow could see the plea in her eyes.

“You need help,” he agreed. She nodded.

“U.S. Marshals?”

“Marlow is the marshal who looked out for me in Boston. Marlow, this is Supervisory Agent Barbour, he runs the office here.” Lindsey sounded dazed.

Marlow pulled his work ID out of an inner pocket of his jacket and flipped it to her boss. He didn’t care about polite introductions. “Who said no police, Lindsey?” he prompted.

“I don’t know. They have my daughter and her babysitter.” She pulled a cell phone out of her purse, unlocked it, and pulled up her messages. Her hands shook when she turned the screen to show him. The photo had been taken in a garage or utility space, and Marlow recognized both the young woman and the girl tied up on the floor in the shot.

“I don’t know what happened at the end,” Lindsey said. “There was a lot of shouting and— That was a gunshot before the call cut off.” She looked ill. “I have to go.”

Agent Barbour handed Marlow’s ID back to him. “I’m closing the office and coming with you,” he said. “Marshal Stirling can drive, since he’s made it clear he doesn’t intend to be left behind either.”

Marlow didn’t like letting the human take charge, but he was willing to compromise as long as he was the one who got to drive. He could feel the pack stirring in response to Jackie’s injuries. He would have to be careful about running into other wolves on the scene. He hoped the warning text he’d gotten off before the call ended would give them the edge they needed to rescue Jackie before he showed up with the humans. If not, they were going to be dealing with one hell of a lot more gunshot wounds.


	6. Too Little, Too Late

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Owen drive hell for leather across town on a rescue mission. Will they arrive in time, or will it be too little, too late?

_Sam_

 

Probably neither of us should have driven in our condition, but I wasn’t about to argue with Owen in a rage. He emerged from the carriage house with one of the pack’s giant medical kits about the time I got the truck started. I was halfway down the driveway before he got the door shut behind him.

“Where’m I going? Alec’s?”

“Don’t know.” The pain in my shoulder was fading. Owen dug in his pockets and surfaced with a flip phone that had seen better days. He stabbed in a number and waited impatiently while it rang several times before someone picked up. “Alec, don’t hang up—”

“Alec took the worst of it,” Collin answered instead, his voice gravelly with the wolf’s influence. “He’ll be a few minutes. How close are you to Woodland Park?”

“’Bout ten minutes. Six if I push it,” I said. Somehow I didn’t crash into the back of the little Mazda that stopped right in front of us, but it was a near thing. Pain and rage spilled through the pack bonds, wearing on my control like waves on the shore. I couldn’t drive any faster without attracting attention.

“Close,” Owen growled. I could feel the rest of the pack stirring, but distantly. “I know this area. None of the pack live here.”

There was silence on the other end of the line for a handful of heartbeats. Owen pointed to a side street without putting the phone down and I took the turn obediently. Neither of us knew what we’d find when we reached Jackie, just her pain leaking into the pack bonds.

“Collin?” Owen prompted, an edge in his voice.

“See what you find,” the pack second answered. “Marlow’s on his way, but he may have Company. It’ll be a bit before we can get to you.”

I could hear the capitalization in how Collin pronounced the word. Marlow was with the U.S. Marshals, which meant he might have human law enforcement with him, and we’d have to hide our wolfish natures.

“And?”

I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel to give my nerves an outlet. This was a nice neighborhood. Not the sort of place where the neighbors would overlook a pack of rampaging werewolves.

“Try not to alarm the humans.” He rattled off an address about a block from the park. “This requires a delicate touch.”

“A delicate touch?” Owen hissed. “She’s been shot!”

The steering wheel rumbled with the force of Collin’s angry snarl. “She was there on pack business. More than I can say for you, lately.”

Owen’s eyes were pure gold when I caught a glimpse of them in the mirror.

“We’re not far from that address, sir. Maybe a couple of minutes,” I interrupted. Werewolf hearing was such that phone calls were never private when one of us was around. “You said she was on pack business?”

“If she was shot, it’s a human that did it. Try not to add to the bodies. It’s going to be hard enough keeping this quiet.”

I wasn’t sure whether or not Collin hung up before Owen crushed the phone in his bare hand.

“Jackie was shot?” I’d felt her pain, but I hadn’t known the cause. I try to avoid catching bullets.

“Yes.”

My stomach dropped. “It’s early yet. No way the neighbors missed gunshots. That’s why Marlow’s coming. No matter how nice we act, the police are gonna figure out what we are.” A lot of packs in a lot of places were out to the public. The one in Louisville was. The Bluegrass Pack, though, we were still a secret. “What are we supposed to do?”

“That depends.” Owen unzipped the duffel bag that housed the first aid kit.

“On what?”

He hadn’t shifted, but there was nothing human left in his face. “Whether or not she dies.”

The address Collin had given me took us into the Woodland Triangle neighborhood, scant blocks from the sprawling park where they held the big art fair at the end of every summer. My wolf and I didn’t care for the crowds that descended on the park like swarms of locusts, but Rob had never let that stop him from dragging me out to enjoy the festival. When the fair was on, folks needed shuttles to reach the park. Now the streets were empty of people and cars.

The house was a two storey brick number with a stately wrought iron fence around the yard. A lot of the homes in this area were connected to each other, but the one Collin sent us to was detached. Somebody had painted all the decorative moulding cream colored, and added a few dormers to the roofline at some point in the past. A huge old ash tree ruled over one corner of the lot, every bit as ancient as the well-preserved house. There were even little gourds and a long dead jack o’lantern sitting on the front porch, clustered around a bright blue sign warning of a security system within. We were covered in dust and grime from the hoarder’s place. Nobody looking at us was gonna think we belonged in a place this fancy.

“Turn here.”

I pulled a hard left onto a sheltered driveway edged with trees. I stomped on the brakes and brought us to a screeching halt in front of a matching brick garage tucked around the corner from the main part of the house. Owen was out of the passenger’s seat and halfway up the paved red brick walk before I finished turning the engine off. There were no other cars in the driveway, no signs of forced entry front or back.

“Doesn’t look like anybody was breaking in. What’s Jackie doing here?” I asked.

“Don’t know. Catch.” Owen tossed me the bag with its medical supplies and pushed the back door open.

The outside of the house was well kept, but as soon as Owen forced the door open, I was hit with a wave of chemical detergent smell so strong it made my eyes water. I almost didn’t see the alarm panel just inside, but I didn’t need to worry. It hadn’t been armed, and the light glowed a cheerful green. Laundry soap packets were scattered through the hallway. Someone had burst a dozen of them, leaving bright blue gel footprints smeared across the hardwood floors. The detergent muddied the air enough to make me sneeze. There was no sign of a crazed gunman in the empty hall.

“Jackie’s pies.” Owen lifted a pair of bags from a bakery a few blocks away. “For tomorrow.” His voice seemed oddly muffled and far away. The whole house did. Everything was quiet, and my wolf itched for release.

I didn’t like that any more than I liked the melancholy look on his face. “She’s not dead,” I growled, stalking into the open door of the laundry room. The detergent scent was stronger in there. I covered my nose with the collar of my shirt, but I couldn’t stop my eyes from watering. The shiny white plastic face of the washing machine was caved in, and the door was hanging from the front by a single hinge. 

I followed the mess of spilled laundry soap and slippery footprints around the corner, where the smell of gunpowder drowned out the harsh detergents. Fresh blood dotted the tile and was smeared on the panels of the steel fire door leading to the attached garage. The smell of fresh blood and death hit me like a punch as soon as I stepped through the door. If I hadn’t been working to keep my agitated wolf under wraps, it might have made me shift right then and there.

It was a bigger mess than Owen’s house. A heavy rolling tool chest was embedded in the wall above the garage door opener, dripping blood from the casters. There was more spattered on the hood of Jackie’s car, and on the handlebars of the tiny pink bike that had gone through the shattered windshield. I felt pack magic settle over me as the drywall dust rained down from a crater in the ceiling, a look-away spell that kept us hidden whenever we hunted. There was enough blood pooled on the floor that even the shiny white epoxy might not be enough to keep the stains from seeping in.

Jackie was on the other side of the car, fighting an older lady I didn’t recognize. The usual warmth of her golden brown skin had faded to sickly ash, and most of the blood I could smell was hers. We’re hard to kill, but blood loss works just as well on us as any other creature. We needed to take care of that wound.

Gunshot or no, I wouldn’t have worried about our Jackie winning a fight against a human if not for the knife. The woman Jackie was up against was a rail thin human, with high cheekbones made even starker by scraping her greying hair into a severe bun. Between her hair and her pantsuit, she looked like she belonged in an office somewhere, not wielding a fifteen inch long Bowie knife against a bloodsoaked werewolf.

“It’s over for you, little wolf,” she snapped, raising her knife. “Surrender.”

Jackie wrenched the side view mirror from her car and smashed it into the human woman’s wrist. She hissed like a snake and struck, the silver-bright edge of her blade sinking into Jackie’s chest. The pack bonds shuddered with the force of her loss. We didn’t have a submissive in our pack. Jackie was as close as we came to something we all agreed to protect. Her death rolled and echoed like thunder. I didn’t know if it was Jackie’s death or the strange pressure I’d sensed as soon as we entered the house that drove me to the floor. I only knew I’d failed. Jackie was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *coughs*
> 
> Anyway we'll have the next chapter for you soon (as in we're working on it right now!). Please don't kill us...


	7. Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's nothing quite like a structural fire to get in the way of revenge, as Sam and Owen learn the hard way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains a fairly vivid-ish description of a character dying, and may be disturbing to some readers. Please proceed with caution if this applies to you!

_Sam_

 

Owen lunged past me in a silent rush, crashing into Jackie’s murderer with all the force of a runaway train. She screamed, and something in me _snapped_. Every pain I’d ever known flared to life. It had been seven years since I shattered my leg falling off the High Bridge trestle, but I felt it every bit as keenly as I had then – more, since I’d been knocked unconscious when I hit the water. My knees hit the concrete, and the jolt was enough to break the last shred of my control.

The wolf hit my consciousness in a surge that dimmed color and overpowered us with scent. I fought to keep from shifting right then and there, which meant I was rooted to the spot when the strange women spat an epithet and gestured sharply in my direction. I crashed through a set of utility shelves that had somehow avoided the earlier carnage and ended up briefly buried under somebody’s Christmas ornaments. Owen thudded off the wall not far from me and bounced back to his feet, murder in his yellow eyes. All I sensed from my packmate was an endless sea of boundless rage. I struggled up, though moving felt like someone had dumped me in a vat of molasses. My wolf wanted out, but there was no time. I couldn’t afford to get caught in a shift right now, no matter how mad my other half was.

The woman screamed again, and flung an honest to goodness fireball in my friend’s direction. Owen dodged it, quick as a snake, and I finally realized what we were fighting. I didn’t know who she was or how she came to be wrestling with Jackie in a garage in a nice part of town, but that woman was a witch. Right about that time I also realized the showy bit of magic that had missed Owen had set the garage ablaze.

I swore under my breath. All I knew about witches was that they were bad news, to be avoided on pain of death. They weren’t the sparkly pink dress-wearing, bubble-habitating, shoe-giving-out kind of witches I’d grown up thinking of as good witches. Ours was a witch eat witch world, sometimes literally. If they didn’t turn to black magic when they were young, they weren’t too likely to survive the rest of their kind. I didn’t know how to fight them.

Just then, I didn’t care. This witch had murdered Jackie. The particulars didn’t matter as much as vengeance, and she was too busy with Owen to bother with me just then. I slid through the blood and gore until I reached Jackie’s side. I might not know how to fight a witch, but I knew how to operate a gun, and somebody had shot our poor girl before the end. If I could find that, I could end the witch right then and there. Their magic was powerful, but they weren’t immortal. Not like we could be, with luck on our side, the way it hadn’t been for Jackie.

Blood oozed like tar from the wound in Jackie’s chest. What we’d seen wasn’t the first cut, I realized, but one of several in a strange pattern like those so-called tribal tattoos that went in and out of style, but carved in Jackie’s flesh.

“Wolf,” she rasped.

I jumped away from her like I’d been struck by lightning. Jackie surged after me, chest rising and falling with uneven breaths. Her eyes glowed in her face like the red glass they put around the candles at the fancy Italian restaurant Rob loved so much. I’d never seen anything like it in all my long life, and it scared the shit outta me. Those weren’t Jackie’s eyes, human or wolf.

Owen crashed down between us, and Jackie struck at him like a rattlesnake. He shoved her away before he realized who was after his throat. The smoke was starting to get thick, acrid with burning insulation and fed by the spilled gasoline and chemicals in the garage. I’d lost track of where the witch had gone between the lowered visibility and Jackie somehow not being dead.

Jackie landed in a heap and climbed up the utility shelving she’d landed by like it was a ladder. I was used to her being graceful, like we all are, but more. She’d been some kinda beauty queen before she went wolf, and most of the time she walked like she was floating. Not anymore. She staggered upright, clutching at the shelves as blood seeped from her wounds. With all the smoke, all I could see of her was the red glow of her eyes.

“Come out, little wolves,” the witch called, stepping through the smoke like it was nothing. “My knife is hungry. Show yourselves.”

Owen rolled to a crouch, ready to strike. A rumbling growl escaped my chest, the only part of my wolf I could safely let out. She turned toward us, the corner of her mouth pulling up in a wicked smile. The weird air pressure I’d felt when we first came in was growing again. I’d about had my fill of witch magic.

The smile vanished the second the paint can slammed into the back of her head. The hollow clunk reminded me of the sound a melon makes when somebody smashes it. The effect was just about the same. The witch went down like a dropped sack of beans, the back of her skull caved in. Jackie swayed over her, clutching at the bloody, dented can. “Sam?” she whimpered, the red glow fading from her eyes like a flickering candle before she collapsed on top of the witch’s body.

Flames burst out around them, licking at the witch’s corpse. The smoke alarms finally screamed to life, too. I staggered through the fire and dragged Jackie away before her clothes could catch. The witch was already blackening around the edges. I lost a few seconds between the time I grabbed her and when I came back to myself, kneeling beside her on the concrete several feet from the flames. I couldn’t remember if I yelled or if Owen felt my distress, but he was there too, her blood soaking into the knees of his dusty jeans. Her skin felt cool when I touched her. We run hot. It’s the wolf’s influence. We were losing her.

“We gotta get out of here,” I growled.

He shook his head and ripped the first aid kit open.

“The garage is on fire!”

“Trust me,” he snapped. “The witch might be dead. Doesn’t mean her magic is.” He unearthed a massive can of rock salt ripped the lid off, dumping it over all of us. Jackie screamed as soon as the salt touched her open wounds, her eyes flying open, bright yellow with the wolf again. It was a dangerous sign, but I’d never been happier to see it.

“It’s gonna be okay, Jackie. We’re here,” I promised. “Just hold on, honey.” A burst of fire rocked Jackie’s car on its tires. I let loose with my best four-letter contractor power words and bundled Jackie into my arms. We needed air or none of us would make it out of here. There was nothing I could do with Owen since he outranked me, but I wasn’t leaving Jackie in this any longer. I sucked in a breath down low where the air was still mostly clear and pushed to my feet. It wasn’t a big space, but I mass a lot, and a couple of steps was all I needed to get up enough speed to take down the big garage door. It rang like a gong when I crashed into it, steel panels separating and collapsing around us. I took most of the blow on my back and shoulder, protecting Jackie from the worst of it.

Taking down the door let us out, and for a moment the flames seemed to pull back, but the whoosh of fresh air my impromptu escape let in was the next best thing to throwing more gas into the inferno. Next thing I knew, I was outside, fighting my wolf for control. There were bits of fiberglass in my clothes and hair, and I could feel the sting of a number of cuts, none of them serious enough to slow us down. The garage was billowing thick clouds of choking smoke. It took me a second to register the distant whine of sirens. If the fire alarms were wired into the home security system, they would automatically summon the fire department now that they’d gone off. We had minutes at best.

I staggered back away from the heat trying not to double over and drop Jackie. My lungs burned with the need to cough. Owen still hadn’t come out. Inside the garage, the fire roared like a living thing. I couldn’t make anything out in the choking black smoke, but I could hear the timber rafters overhead crackled and groaned. Without the fire door separating the space from the laundry room, the rest of the house would probably catch before too long.

“Owen!” I hollered, my voice raw with fear, the wolf, and smoke damage. He wasn’t dead. I could feel his rage and pain, but I couldn’t go after him with Jackie in my arms. Fire shot through the roof as I backed away. I couldn’t lose him, too.

I didn’t remember getting the truck open or putting Jackie inside. She needed us, needed me, but I couldn’t let Owen die. I just couldn’t. It was suicide to run back into that garage, but Owen was in there. I dove into the smoke without a second thought.

The roar of the fire drowned out any sound Owen might’ve been making. It was sunny outside, but smoke painted the interior pitch black. I was barely able to see my hands through the thick, roiling clouds of it. In the smoke, my nose was useless, and there was no time to change to my four legged form.

I dropped down to a crouch, feeling my way along the walls in the darkness. The air was a little clearer toward the floor. Every time I tripped on a tool or a toy, I cursed the witch and all her kind. “Owen!” I yelled deeper into the garage. It wasn’t a huge space, but in the smoke and heat, I couldn’t tell up from down. “Owen, we gotta get out of here, now!”

Owen staggered into sight. His whole body was streaked with soot, and he was cradling a blackened bundle in his arms. For one horrible moment I thought he’d found the owner of the tiny little bicycle that had found its way into Jackie’s windshield. Even in the smoke, I recognized the black hatched, creamy handle of the witch’s knife. He’d stayed back for the witch’s knife. I was going to kill him for this, just as soon as I finished saving both our lives.

He staggered toward me with flames still licking at his hands, clutching the bloodied knife close to his chest. I grabbed his arm and he sagged against me. Sucking in a breath of the marginally clearer air near the floor, I hauled my friend into my arms and staggered in the direction of the open door, going on memory alone. It was sheer luck more than anything that let me blunder back into the open air, coughing and blinking the stinging smoke from my eyes. Even staying low as I had, I’d gotten a couple lungfuls of the stuff.

We just made it. The whole garage collapsed with a roar, sending the flames higher into the sky. The heat felt like a bad sunburn on my skin. “You are an idiot!” I snarled, half carrying him to the truck. I didn’t know how long we had before either the police or fire crews got here, but we couldn’t be there when that happened.

Owen coughed when I shoved him into the truck. The banshee wail of sirens carried on the breeze, scarcely audible over the fire. There wasn’t time to argue. We had to go, now, before anyone else got hurt.


	8. Escape to Owen's

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With chaos raining down, Sam checks in with his Alpha and runs to a safe place to try and help his injured packmates, but they don't make it there alone.

_Sam_

 

I was so focused on the sirens that I didn’t register the ringtone of my phone until we were a couple blocks away from the burning house. I jabbed my fingers into the buttons without looking. I must have hit the right ones, because the Alpha’s growl sucked all the air right out of the cab of my truck. “Sir—”

“What happened?” Collin interrupted.

Relief slid through me at the sound of the pack second’s voice. I was having enough trouble just breathing without coughing and driving, much less managing Alec in a temper. “I don’t know, we found Jackie wrestling with an old lady, and I—I think she had magic.” It should have been impossible, but then, so was turning into a wolf once a month. “She stabbed Jackie, I mean cut her more than stabbed her, but as soon as she did Jackie was just gone, when she opened her eyes I thought—”

“There was a black witch,” Owen rasped over my shoulder. “She’s dead. Jackie isn’t.” He started coughing. I glanced at him in the rear view mirror, blackened with soot and doubled over, but I couldn’t drive and help him at the same time.

“...What?” Collin sounded as confused as I felt. “Jackie’s alive? There was a _witch?_ ” Alec’s snarl cut him off, and I heard a brief scuffle over the phone. “If you break that we can’t talk to them,” I heard Collin say irritably.

“Jackie ain’t dead,” I repeated. “The woman—witch—she did somethin’ with a big ugly knife and now I can’t feel Jackie in the pack bonds anymore. I thought she was dead, but she ain’t. Her eyes keep goin’ red, but she clobbered the witch good with a paint can and put an end to that before she could get at me or Owen. Oh… Uh, and the house caught fire.” I knew I was babbling, but I couldn’t help it. My wolf wanted out worse than I’d ever felt, and I couldn’t let it. I blew through a four way stop sign because I didn’t notice it, and someone honked at me. “The witch sorta torched it.”

“Where was the child Jackie was watching?” Collin asked, and the bottom dropped out of my stomach. That little pink bicycle flashed in my memory.

“Didn’t see any sign of a kid,” I said.

“Whose idea was it,” Owen wheezed, “to make a werewolf watch a _human child?_ ”

In the background I could hear Alec cursing, his voice an octave lower than it should have been.

“Not now, Owen,” Collin snapped back. “Jackie’s with you and not dead, yes? Has she said anything?”

“She’s hurt pretty bad. Breathin’, but ain’t talkin’. We need to get her fixed up and soon, and Owen too.” I still couldn’t get over her eyes burning red. What the hell was going on? “What makes one of us get red eyes? She’s like a stoplight over here.”

“How badly are the three of you injured?” Collin demanded, not answering my question.

I did a quick mental check of myself. “The two of us ain’t too bad. Bumps and bruises and breathed a little too much smoke for me. Owen’s much the same, but he was in the fire longer than me. Ain’t had a chance to give things a good look yet.”

“I’ll live,” Owen interjected dryly.

“Jackie’s the worst off. Shot and bleedin’ from those knife cuts, too.”

“You’re absolutely certain the witch is dead? Some spells linger on even after death,” Alec warned us, his voice a husky growl.

“Dead as a doornail,” I confirmed. “And Owen doused us all in salt, said it would stop her spells. Should I head back to the big house? My place is closer, but I ain’t got any way to hold an injured wolf at home.” And if Owen needed burns treated, we might end up needing a silvered cage to hold him. I couldn’t do it anymore. He outranked me.

“The pack’s at the house,” Owen rasped. “I’m not going there. If I show up weak, they’ll tear me apart.” He trailed off, coughing again.

“But, Owen—”

“No. Alec needs space to work on Jackie. He can’t do that if the pack’s after me.”

Frustration and anxiety welled in me. I didn’t have time to fight him, not with Jackie bleeding out in the passenger seat of my truck.

Owen rolled the window down and spat out black gunk. “I have a cage at the apartment. We’ll go there.”

“What apartment?” Collin demanded.

I cringed, remembering the state of the place even with the cleaning Owen and I had done. It was a good thing werewolves couldn’t get infections. “It’s a renovation project Owen and I are working on,” I clarified. I rattled off the address for Collin.

Collin started to protest, but Alec broke in and cut him off. “Fine. We’ll meet you there.” I heard a car starting up on the other end. They must have grabbed Collin’s car, because the engine wheezed when it started. The Alpha had half a dozen vehicles to choose from, but they all sounded like purring tigers to my ears. He liked to go fast. We could have used the extra speed, considering.

Relief at the destination decided almost made me dizzy. I ain’t submissive, but there were too many strong personalities involved for me to compete. “Yessir,” I agreed gratefully, snapping the phone shut.

Jackie made a low, pained sound that had more to do with her wolf than any human. At least she’d regained consciousness. “I know, honey, I’m sorry. We’ll be there soon.” I figured I could get us there inside of five minutes. I’d driven further than I thought in my rush to escape the burning garage.

Owen started hacking and stuck his head out the window again. “We have a problem.”

“Which one,” I shot back worriedly. I wasn’t sure I could handle something else going wrong today.

“We’re being followed. _Don’t look_ , Sam.”

I swallowed a curse of my own and forced myself to focus on the road ahead. “More witches?” I guessed. It would be like them to come after us for killing one of their own, or maybe for that knife Owen had risked self-immolation to retrieve.

“Don’t know.” He bent over the knife in another coughing fit. “Sam – they can’t have the blade.”

“It’s a knife, Owen,” I growled. “I own six of them. They fold up in my pocket so I can carry them around without looking like I was posing for the covers off one of those damn pirate books we threw out!”

“Pirates didn’t use Bowie knives.”

The steering wheel vibrated under my hands with the force of my snarl. “You know what I meant. What is so freaking special about that knife to make it worth almost losing your life?”

“I think the witches used it when they killed Alec’s mate.”

That shut me up for a solid minute and even made me forget about our tail. Our Alpha was a decent guy, if a little nuts at times. I didn’t know a whole lot about his past because nobody wanted to talk about it, but if what Owen was saying was true…

“Uh, maybe you shouldn’t let him see that, if that’s so,” I finally ventured.

Owen’s bitter laugh turned into another coughing fit.

We were getting close to Owen’s disaster house now, which meant more decisions. Ultimately, we’d been ordered to keep things as much out of the human eye as we could, but that might also hurt our chances of survival. We weren’t as secret as we used to be, back when I was new. Werewolves had gone public at the insistence of the Marrok, the silver-tongued tyrant that ruled over us all. He had been bringing us out a few at a time, doling out heroes and action stars and the like. A half-crazed pack run by an ultimate frisbee enthusiast just didn’t fit his mold.

If we had to go public, we’d be in trouble, all right, but public was better than dead. I’d pick survival every time. “Alec and Collin are still a few minutes out at least,” I said. “Even if they were starting from Collin’s place, it’d take them a bit to get here. We’re on our own with whomever’s following us. Any ideas, Owen?”

“One.” His eyes gleamed gold in the mirror. “Don’t die.”

“That’s _real_ helpful,” I snarked back, fighting flickers of panic again.

“Witches.” Owen spat more gunk out the window as we turned the corner. “They can get you from far away. Need hair, blood, or skin to do it. Stuff like that.” He was coughing too much to fight again, and Jackie was helpless. It was all down to me. The steering wheel creaked under my hands. “Best thing to do is shoot ’em before they get you.”

Which was great advice if I’d had a gun. I’m a carpenter and a werewolf, not a cop, so there wasn’t much reason to carry. There might be some ancient hunting rifles buried in Owen’s jumble, but there wasn’t time to search for any. Maybe I could throw romance novels at them until they surrendered. “You have any guns in that wreck of yours?”

Owen wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “That depends. Do you know how to shoot a flintlock?”

“Nope.” I took a corner a little harder than I should have and the truck’s tires screeched in protest. We’d come up on the block of fancy houses where Owen’s project home squatted, a festering wreck surrounded by beauty. All those fancy folk would love having werewolves and witches fighting in their yards. I could just see the dumpster through the overgrown landscaping that surrounded the dump he wanted to live in. It was only by werewolf reflexes that I didn’t clip anything when I sent the truck hurtling up the narrow gravel drive to the back where the carriage house stood.

I barely got the engine turned off before Owen dragged me from the cab. I hadn’t even heard him get out of the truck. “Get Jackie inside. There’s a cage under the stairs if you need it.” He let go of me and I lost track of him when I slammed my door and turned to go for Jackie in the passenger’s seat.

I was halfway around the back of the truck to get her when a four door Toyota squealed around the corner and came to a stop across the end of the gravel drive. My truck is meant for hauling more than it is for crossing rough terrain. I could get out past the car if I had to, but it wouldn’t be pretty. The sedan was a nondescript beige-y color, the car equivalent of office khakis, and a couple years out of date. The license plates were local, but that didn’t mean much. I’d never seen any before, but even I knew Kentucky was lousy with witches. A second sedan peeled in right behind them, this one a Chevy emblazoned with the logo for the Combined Nonhuman and Transhuman Relations Provisors. I swallowed a snarl. Cantrip made their folks go armed with silver. I’d almost prefer the witches.

Lacking any available weapons, I groped for the next best thing in the bed of my truck and pulled out a six foot length of steel rebar. It would’ve been too heavy for a human to use effectively, but the weight didn’t bother me in the least, and it made me feel better to have something in my hands.

The man who hopped out of the driver’s seat of the unmarked Toyota was tall, dark, and handsome, the kind of man who looked like his face had been chiseled out of stone by some kind of fancy sculptor and a body to match. He’d’ve been right at home on the covers of those books we’d dumped. If he’d been interested, I might’ve been too – but I didn’t have eyes for anybody but Rob, and Marlow Sterling played for the other team. Our pack third had the number of just about every eligible woman in the entire metropolitan area and not a lick of common sense to go with. He was a hell of a fighter, though. If not for the marshals’ star on his belt, I’d have been happy to see him.

It wasn’t just that Marlow worked for the human authorities, it was that they were with him. A tall blonde woman slid out of the passenger seat to join him, her movements brisk and purposeful. She was just on the tall side of average height and had more muscle than I expected beneath the soft fabric of her blouse.

She was also pointing a gun right at me.

“Where is she?” the woman demanded in a growl that would have done a werewolf proud.

If this lady wanted Jackie, she was gonna have to go through me. I tightened my grip on my improvised quarterstaff and stared back at her. Most folks have trouble meeting a werewolf’s gaze for long. I’d lost sight of Owen before Marlow and the Tripper car showed up, but I hoped he’d gotten clear before anyone saw him. I didn’t hear him coughing anymore. “This is private property.”

“Cut the bull,” she snapped. “What have you done with my daughter?”

I wasn’t real clear on Jackie’s age or where she’d come from. She’d joined the pack a handful of years ago, and I’d never asked questions. Even those who get a say in becoming werewolves don’t like to talk about the circumstances, so we all try not to pry too much. But if that woman was her mother, I’d eat Marlow’s wide brimmed hat. It wasn’t because she was blonde – Jackie once told me she had a Korean grandmother, a black father, and a blonde mother – but I was pretty sure that Jackie was still in her twenties, and this one didn’t look to be far out of them.

I was still figuring out what to say when a man climbed out of the Cantrip vehicle. He was older, forties or early fifties, with salt and pepper hair and a little bit of a middle aged paunch over his belt. Like the blonde woman and Marlow, he was armed – and like the blonde, he had his gun leveled at my head.

“We know what you are,” he snapped. “Put the weapon down!”

I caught a significant glance from Marlow, and I really didn’t want to find out what silver bullets felt like. Moving with deliberate slowness, I transferred the rebar to a one-handed grip and moved my arms out to the sides. I wasn’t quite willing to let go of it yet, but if I didn’t do something they’d just shoot me.

“What weapon? It’s rebar. I’m a contractor. What’s the problem, officers?” The wolf made my voice a deep rumble. Neither of us were fans of having guns pointed in our direction. I hoped to hell Marlow or Owen had a plan, because if not, I was a sitting duck.

Marlow flashed his badge at me. I knew where he worked, but if the humans didn’t know Marlow was a wolf, I wasn’t going to tell them. “Marlow Sterling, U.S. Marshals. This is Agent Barbour and Agent Mayfield, Combined Nonhuman and Transhuman Relations.” I swallowed a growl at the mention of the hated Cantrip. “Nobody here is looking for trouble. A little girl and her babysitter went missing.” Marlow still had his weapon pointed toward the dirt, but I knew he could snap it up in a hurry if he needed to. “We heard there were werewolves involved in their disappearance, and followed this vehicle here from the place where they vanished.”

“Wouldn’t know anythin’ about a disappearance, officers.” I was in trouble if they kept on that point. I didn’t have a good reason to’ve been at that house except for Jackie, and they could hardly have missed the fact that it was on fire when we’d peeled out of there if they were following that closely. I ain’t a great liar, but six years of living with Rob had at least taught me a little about hedging.

Marlow’s eyebrows crept up toward the brim of his hat. “You’re singed and covered in soot,” he drawled. “You trying to tell me you were at a different house fire?”

Crap. It was like he wanted us all to go down. If it came to it, I’d take a fall for the pack to protect Jackie, but I didn’t have to like it.

“Don’t know anything about any kids,” I said truthfully. “I was just tryin’ to help a friend.”

“He’s lying,” the woman spat. “They aren’t like the fae. Werewolves can lie just fine. My babysitter is in that truck. I saw her!” Her gun hadn’t moved a millimeter.

“I’m not lying. I try not to make a habit of that.” I frowned back at her.

“Then why is Jackie in your truck, and where is Mia?” Her growl would have done a werewolf proud.

“I told you, I was helping my friend. I’m sorry I don’t know where your kid is, but I had nothin’ to do with that.”

“Your friend? Friends don’t kidnap each other!”

“Miss Jackie ain’t been kidnapped.”

“Then prove it,” she snapped.

She was almost as stubborn as Owen. “I can’t. You wanna arrest me for helping a friend? Fine.” I lowered the rebar. I still hadn’t seen Owen, which meant he was hiding. If they took me, the pack lawyers would have me out before dinner. I’d done nothing wrong, but letting them take me would cause a ruckus. It ought to be enough that Owen and Alec could fix poor Jackie, if I played my cards right.

Not one member of the Bluegrass Pack had announced to the world who and what they were – not yet. Every time wolves popped up in new places it caused a stir, and I was more than willing to use that to my advantage if they forced me. Some law enforcement types, like Cantrip, carried guns loaded with silver by rule of law. They liked to think they had us against the ropes, that if they knew all our names and faces and carried a few silver bullets they were safe from harm. Which meant giving them a little bit of truth and shaking things up a notch ought to buy the time my pack needed to heal Jackie and find whatever kid she’d been looking after when she got hurt.

“Arrest me for the high crime of being a werewolf.” I heard the other Tripper suck in a harsh breath through his teeth, but I trusted Marlow to keep the man under control. I really, truly did not want to find out what getting shot felt like. The echoes from Jackie were more than enough. “Just know it’s not gonna get you anywhere. I don’t know a thing about a kid.”

“I could take you down where you stand, boy,” the male Tripper said, the muzzle of his gun twitching a little higher.

“Things didn’t go so well for Cantrip’s last murderer, despite the verdict,” I pointed out. The woman flinched. “I’m a werewolf, but I ain’t a loner. You kill me and you’ve still gotta reckon with my pack.”

“Just being a werewolf isn’t a crime, Agent Barbour,” Marlow broke in firmly, pulling on the dominance that made him third in our pack. It worked fine on humans, they just weren’t consciously aware of the hierarchy like we were. The Tripper’s gun wavered just a little as he lowered it to mirror Marlow’s less threatening ready posture. “I’m going to ask you again, son, did you have anything to do with the disappearance of Agent Mayfield’s daughter?” His gaze flickered toward the truck.

I figured Marlow had seen Owen when he slipped into the old carriage house, even if the humans hadn’t. There was nowhere else to hide out in the open. We were better off without him out here. Used to be, Owen was something of a diplomat, but ever since he got it into his head to challenge for fourth and rocket up the pack ranks, he’d been a lot shorter tempered. We were probably less likely to get shot if he stayed out of sight.

“No sir, I did not,” I replied truthfully. “Nor did anybody from my pack.”

Behind me, I heard the truck’s passenger side door open with a clunk. I dropped the rebar, turned, and darted to catch Jackie before she could tumble all the way to the dirt. She had one of my old flannel shirts wrapped around her shoulders and clutched in one trembling hand, and her skin looked gray against the rust colored print. At least it helped disguise the blood stains a little. I heard one of the Trippers gasp, but thankfully my quick movement hadn’t earned me a bullet in the back.

“Don’t try and move, Jackie, honey, you’re gonna make it worse,” I murmured. Her free hand bunched up tight in my grubby shirt, and her eyes shone wolf gold in the brief moment I saw them. Agent Barbour snapped his gun up to follow her. I wasn’t happy about that, but we aren’t at our best when we’re hurting. It was safe for the humans to be scared.

“Wasn’t Sam,” she croaked. “Lindsey, it wasn’t… Wasn’t werewolves who took Mia. Tried to stop them...”

“Oh, God.” The woman paled an additional shade, and then flushed red with anger I could smell all the way across the space between us. I hadn’t taken the time to look at Jackie’s wounds what with the garage burning down around us, but the flannel shirt had slipped down her chest. There wasn’t much to see on the front of her shoulder, just a tiny hole in the bloodsoaked fabric of her sweater and the awful marks the witch had carved through her clothes and skin. When Jackie stumbled, though, I caught a glimpse of her back. The entrance wound was tiny all right, but one look at her back left me shaking. The bullet must have mushroomed to cause that kind of damage coming out. It should have healed. She should have healed. Even with silver, I’d seen the Alpha do the damndest things with pack magic to help us heal. Jackie was cut off from that, from all of that. I needed to get her away from the humans.

“Jackie, what _happened?_ Why are you with this man? Why haven’t you called an ambulance?”

“No! No ambulance.” Our girl has a pretty voice, fit to match the whole beauty queen thing she’d done while she was human. I wasn’t sure if it was her wolf or pain that left her sounding guttural and hoarse. She’d earn no crowns for this performance. “They were in the house. I tried to save her, I tried. I’m so sorry.” She swayed on her feet and collapsed against me.

“I’m calling for help.”

“ _No_.” Jackie’s eyes flew open, wolf bright and filled with pain. I could feel power gathering around her. Jackie was at the bottom of the pack, but she wasn’t a submissive wolf, no more than I was. Jackie’s eyes bored into mine until all I could see was bright, shining gold. “Not safe.” Her voice was thready and weak, more like the last wisp of smoke from a mountain fire than anything I’d heard from her before. I felt like I was falling into a well of golden light and cold, clear rage. It wasn’t anything I’d experienced before in all my years as a wolf.

“Hey,” Marlow said sharply. I looked up and found him staring at me. The air around my head cleared a little and I could breathe again.

“Why isn’t it safe, Jackie? Where is Mia?” Agent Mayfield pressed. “Tell me!”

I flinched. Jackie’s tall as a beanpole, but she looks more like an airy fairy princess than anything threatening. They didn’t realize what they were dealing with. And if I told them, they’d just shoot us all. Werewolves only take orders from more dominant werewolves. I could control myself, I hoped, but Jackie had been torn from the pack. If Marlow and Owen and I had to keep her under wraps, it wouldn’t be pretty.

“I don’t know. They took her.” Jackie tried to move toward the humans and fell against me instead. I gathered her up in my arms so she couldn’t fall.

“She’s one of _them_ ,” the older man said. “Look at her eyes.” I hadn’t realized the humans could see her eyes that well.

“What?”

“I’m a werewolf,” Jackie said, her voice little more than a rattle.

Agent Mayfield stared at us with her jaw hanging open. She stayed like that for a handful of heartbeats, and then rounded on Marlow. “How is my babysitter a werewolf? You said you vetted her yourself!”

“I did!” Marlow protested. “You tell me. You’re the one with the database.”

“We _will_ talk about this later.” She reminded me a little bit of Rob with how she could make such an innocent phrase into a death threat. She sounded calm when she turned toward us again, but I could smell her anxiety over the blood and soot that clung to us both. “Jackie, you need a hospital. Please let me call an ambulance for you.”

“And put all those people in danger for the sake of a monster?” Agent Barbour hadn’t lowered his gun. I could see how white his knuckles were. One wrong breath and he’d pull the trigger.

“Werewolf or not, Jackie’s hurt. And she’s our only witness.” Agent Mayfield checked the safety and put her fun back in its holster. “Please, Jackie.”

“They took her.” Jackie pressed her face into my neck, breathing deeply. “You smell like food.”

I didn’t think the humans had heard her last comment. Disturbing as it was, if her wolf was present enough to make her feel hungry, we weren’t outta hope yet. “Keep it together, darlin’,” I murmured, and then raised my voice a bit. “He ain’t wrong, it’s safer for everybody if we avoid hospitals. I was tryin’ to get her someplace quiet and private to take care of her hurts where nobody’d be in danger. I have a medical kit in the truck and our Alpha’s on his way.”

“Your Alpha.” Mayfield took a shaky breath. “Right. Okay. Jackie would never hurt Mia, werewolf or not. If she can’t go to the emergency room, what can we do to help?”

I didn’t trust her as far as I could throw her – which was pretty far. During the last summer Olympics, Alec gathered the whole pack at his huge old farm and made us try some of the sports just for fun. We’d broken records, not that anyone had been around to see. Jackie had delighted in handing out the chocolate medals in their gold wrappers. I shook off the intrusive thought and focused on the present. “She’s been shot. She might calm down and have an easier time talkin’ to you ’bout what happened if you put those guns away.”

“How can you trust her? Your daughter is missing. This – _thing_ is a werewolf, for God’s sake!” the other agent hissed.

“She’s taken care of Mia for weeks. Months. If she wanted to do something, she had plenty of opportunity. She never acted on it, and neither did her… pack. Please, Seth, put the gun away and help me save my baby.”

The man scowled, but returned his weapon to its holster. Only then did Marlow follow suit.

Agent Mayfield took a step toward us, her voice low and soothing like Alec’s when he was working with those horses of his. “Jackie, honey, I know you’re hurt. Can you tell me who did this? Who came after you and Mia?”

Jackie breathed deep, and I felt my pulse jump in response. I hadn’t forgotten her comment about food. “I dunno if she can hear you right now. Being hurt like this makes words pretty hard to understand.”

“I understand,” Jackie whispered. Something about her voice raised the hair on the back of my neck. She sounded wrong, dry and threatening somehow, like a snake slithering in old dry leaves. “There was a witch. She cut me. Her people shot me.”

“What did they look like?” Agent Mayfield interrupted. “Did they take Mia?”

“They wore masks. I never saw their faces.” We didn’t need faces to hunt properly. A scent would do, but if Cantrip didn’t know, I had no intention of filling them in. “They put her in a van. Are you bleeding, Sam?”

“Not anymore,” I told her. The cuts and scrapes I’d picked up in the fight with the witch had long since scabbed over and would be gone in an hour at most. I didn’t like the cadence of her voice. There was an odd quality to it that didn’t sound like the Jackie I knew at all.

“I can smell it,” she growled, twisting enough to look up at me. Her eyes were still gold with the wolf, but there was a red spark to them now, like seeing the light on a train barreling toward me with no time to get off the tracks.

“Jackie,” Agent Mayfield said firmly. “What did the van look like?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember.” Jackie’s hand balled up in a fist, pulling her bloodsoaked sweater away from her skin. “They shot me, and the witch…” Her breath hitched. “What did she do to me?” The air felt heavy around us, like it had back in the garage. I thought the salt was supposed to kill the magic, but it smelled the same, dark and herbal and heavy with blood. “Sam?” Her voice cracked like a teenager’s, her eyes rolling back in her head.

She wasn’t breathing. I jumped into the bed of the truck with her and set her down on the rest of my supply of rebar. I could hear Marlow yelling at the man from Cantrip about putting his gun away, but I trusted him to keep me from getting shot. I was more concerned with Jackie.

“Jackie, can you hear me?”

She sucked in a huge, wheezing lungful of air and went as stiff as the steel she was lying on. I got her turned onto her side before she started convulsing. I knew from human first aid classes that it was more dangerous to hold her down than it was to let her flail. With a human, I’d have tried to time it, but werewolf first aid is a lot simpler and a lot more brutal than anything they offer in the hospitals.

It felt like the seizure went on forever, but it couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes. Marlow was still arguing with the damn Tripper about his gun when Jackie opened her eyes again. They were pure gold this time without a hint of red. I could deal with her wolf.

“There you are, honey. It’s okay.”

For a moment I thought it would be all right, that she believed me. Then one of the humans stepped too close to my truck.

It’s no wonder she started out in pageants. Jackie’s face is almost too beautiful to believe she started out human. It wasn’t pretty then, twisted in a silent snarl of rage and pain. Bones moved beneath her warm brown skin as the wolf took over. Her clothes tore around her limbs as the bones cracked and rearranged themselves.

I eased back toward the tailgate, putting myself between her and the humans. They were still too close. “Get back from the truck. Now.” If they were too stupid to get away in the time we had left, Jackie’s wolf might just kill them all.


End file.
